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Programming Language Pragmatics

Michael L. Scott

3.97 · Rating details · 309 ratings · 6 reviews

Programming Language Pragmatics addresses the fundamental principles at work in the most important contemporary languages, highlights the critical relationship between language design and language implementation, and devotes special attention to issues of importance to the expert programmer. Thanks to its rigorous but accessible teaching style, you ll emerge better prepared to choose the best language for particular projects, to make more effective use of languages you already know, and to learn new languages quickly and completely.

Features

Addresses the most recent developments in programming language design, spanning more than forty different languages, including Ada 95, C, C++, Fortran 95, Java, Lisp, Scheme, ML, Modula-3, Pascal, and Prolog.
Places a special emphasis on implementation issues how the techniques used by compilers and related tools influence language design, and vice versa.
Covers advanced topics in language design and implemenation, such as iterators, coroutines, templates (generics), separate compilation, I/O, type inference, and exception handling.
Reviews language-related topics in assembly-level architecture critical for understanding what a compiler does to a program.
Offers in-depth coverage of object-oriented programming, including multiple inheritance and dynamic method binding.
Devotes a special section to static and dynamic linking.
Includes a comprehensive chapter on concurrency, with detailed coverage of both shared-memory and message-passing languages and libraries.
Provides an accessible introduction to the formal foundations of compilation (automata theory), functional programming (lambda calculus), and logic programming (predicate calculus).

About the Author

Michael L. Scott is a professor in the University of Rochester's Department of Computer Science, which he chaired from 1996 to 1999. He is the designer of the Lynx distributed programming language and a co-designer of the Charlotte and Psyche parallel operating systems, the Bridge parallel file system, the Cashmere distributed shared memory system, and the MCS mutual exclusion lock. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985.

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Paperback, Second Edition, 875 pages

Published November 7th 2005 by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers (first published January 1st 1997)

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Aug 27, 2017 Luca rated it really liked it

Shelves: compilers

Long read, but great high level overview. I think it'll serve as a reference as well.

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Apr 22, 2013 David rated it really liked it

The scope of "Proglangprag" (how I've taken to saying it) is enormous. It is not only a (fairly) comprehensive survey of languages, but also a pretty decent guide to understanding how languages are parsed, scanned, and turned into machine language.

Make no mistake: you won't be able to write a compiler for your own language using just this book as your guide. Nor will you be able to write any functioning programs of your own in any of the languages featured in this book.

So what's the point? Well, The scope of "Proglangprag" (how I've taken to saying it) is enormous. It is not only a (fairly) comprehensive survey of languages, but also a pretty decent guide to understanding how languages are parsed, scanned, and turned into machine language.

Make no mistake: you won't be able to write a compiler for your own language using just this book as your guide. Nor will you be able to write any functioning programs of your own in any of the languages featured in this book.

So what's the point? Well, sometimes you have to take a step (or two) away from the keyboard and get a birds-eye view of a subject. Proglangprag is a meticulous guide to the landscape of programming languages.

It's a topic so enormous that it takes a book this big to even explore the territory. In no way can it take the time to explore a language or concept in enough detail for you to do anything practical on a keyboard.

As it is, many whole chapters were removed from the book and put on a companion CD (included with the book). I wish these chapters had been included so that I could have read them from the comfort of my couch like the rest of the book (I sure has heck wasn't going to print them all out). As the author himself states, they're not superfluous chapters and they're worth reading.

Reading Proglangprag straight through is not a fun task by any means. It took me two long months to complete. And now that it's four months later, I couldn't regurgitate any of the material without having to consult the book. But that's not why I read books like this. I read them to fill in gaps in my knowledge and to give these topics familiarity when I come across them again. In this respect, Proglangprag served my needs perfectly.

I wrote a parser for a text-based adventure game system I created called Hoot before, during, and after I read this book. I can say from real, practical experience that familiarity with the material in Proglangprag can make an excellent guide to further research into these topics. Even just knowing the right terminology cannot be overvalued.

Michael Scott's writing is quite dry. You won't be chuckling while you read this, or even getting any of those faint grins you might crack when reading Donald Knuth's footnotes. At times, it's just plain boring, even if you're quite interested in the topic. Nonetheless, I know of no other book with the same range or scope, which puts this in a class of its own and worth reading for that reason alone.

In the end, these are topics with which every programmer should be acquainted. If you've any doubts, bust this beast open and read until you get to the last page. You can thank (or choke) me later. ...more

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May 27, 2012 Daniel rated it really liked it

Shelves: technical

Bought this book in about 2000 for a college course, and held onto it all this time. The class was only a quarter, so I'm sure we didn't go through the whole book in that time. I just reread it from cover to cover, and it has held up pretty well. The newest language covered in my copy was java, but the fundamentals of languages don't change that much in ten years, and I felt like it was a good refresher and overview of some technical things that you just don't interact with much in a non-academi ...more

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Aug 25, 2015 Kory rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: computer-science, reference

This book goes into detail how and why different parts of programming languages are implemented, it uses different languages to help covey the implementation details and how it differs between them.

Whereas a specific programming language book will cover how to use that language, this book helps to understand what goes into the languages and their development, why different languages are suited to certain tasks.

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Dec 26, 2016 Carlo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: computer-systems, favorites

This is a perfect overview of programming languages, their taxonomy, and how they work. Essential reading (and re-reading) for the self-taught or working programmer! The balance between breadth and depth is exactly right and this edition has been updated to include newer languages like Scala, Go and Swift. Belongs on every programmers' bookshelf.

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